


Epithalamium

by SlippinMickeys



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Ficlet, MSR, One Shot, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2021-01-29 21:18:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21416827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlippinMickeys/pseuds/SlippinMickeys
Summary: Codependency is a real bitch. Even when he drives her crazy, she doesn’t know any other way to be. There are too many years between them, too many monsters. She wouldn’t even know how to begin telling some other suitor her story.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 8
Kudos: 121





	Epithalamium

They walk in the house to find the kitchen table upended, a corner of the rug chewed to bits, the baby gate to the laundry room unlatched and wide open. Scully has a few choice words for both Mulder and the offender, still asleep on the couch with a paw in the air.

She’d asked him to make sure the gate was latched when they left, and he’s still pretty sure he’d done so. Daggoo has already proven he’s a regular Houdini, but there’s a _ slight _chance this one’s on him. 

Scully is looking at him with an eyebrow in the air, her arms crossed.

“You’re looking at me like this is my fault...” he says, incredulous.

“It leaves a certain vulpecular impression, yes,” she says, and her phraseology is better than nagging, he has to admit. 

He looks at her blankly for a moment, a flare of something paphian low in his gut.

“I’m insulted by your implication, but impressed by your lexicon.” 

That earned him a smile.

He wasn’t one of those men who could be threatened by a smart woman. Quite the opposite, in fact. Her intelligence was always a turn-on. Years ago, he’d heard her use the word “dolichocephalic” to describe an alien’s head, and he’d had to leave the room for propriety’s sake. And her intelligence was obviously only one of her many attributes. He’d seen the way men looked at her—women too. She was exquisitely beautiful, sapphic, her face cut like a poem. 

He’s known her for over two decades and she’s barely aged in that time. He gives her an assessing look, thinking of Alfred Fellig. Whatever her forever is, it’s where he wants to be.

They’d assigned her to him to punish him and instead they’d given him life; everything he didn’t know he’d ever wanted. She’s a part of him now, even when she’s blaming him for something he’s not entirely sure is his fault, and he’s irritated that she’s irritated. The feeling is very spousal.

They are pair-bonded, _ sui iuris_, mated for life. 

He’ll take her to bed, he thinks. He’ll mark her as his. Again and again and again. 

He’ll worry about the mess later. 

XxXxXxXxXxX

Even in his 50s, he’s as mesomorphic as a sculpture, his eyes like prisms. It is hard to stay mad at him. 

Codependency is a real bitch. Even when he drives her crazy, she doesn’t know any other way to be. There are too many years between them, too many monsters. She wouldn’t even know how to begin telling some other suitor her story. 

She thinks maybe soulmates don’t form in the ether, connected before birth—perhaps instead their bonds are forged in the smithy of life. 

He leans into her, pushing his considerable bulk into her space. 

“I’ll take this one,” he says.

_ You’d better_, she thinks. She’d asked him to check that the gate was closed. She’d asked _ nice._

Instead of moving to clean up the mess before them, he reaches for her, puts a hand on her hip. 

“You’re cute when you’re mad,” he says, leaning down into her personal space. 

She knows what this is. His first seduction was slow--seven glacial years of it—but these days all it takes is the quirk of an eyebrow, a touch to the waist. She feels her heart quicken in anticipation, feels a throb in her womb. 

“You always think I’m cute,” she says.

“You always are.”

It is astonishing to her that their lovemaking these days isn’t rote or practiced. It’s comfortable, yes, but their chemistry is such that he still finds ways to surprise her. 

His chin rasps against the carnose cleft of her thigh and gasping, she knocks an elbow into a burning candle, the hot wax splashing to the floor. 

Their love is an ache, a pang, a culmination of their wanting. It is the only otherworldly thing she believes in.

In the end, he barely has breath, her name a doxology on his lips. 

There is dried candle wax glued to the floor, canine teeth marks in the legs of the coffee table, chaos in her ordered life. Amongst the mess, there is happiness, there is peace, there is no other place she would rather be. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to admiralty for the beta! Much love!


End file.
